1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a method of handling SMS messages and related system, and more particularly, to a method of handling SMS messages capable of providing efficient recognition of a sending entity and related system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The short message service (SMS) is a messaging mechanism that enables short messages of generally no more than 140˜160 characters in length to be transmitted from, and received by a wireless communications device.
First introduced in the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) system, SMS is currently supported by a majority of other digital-based mobile communications systems, such as Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and Long Term Evolution (LTE) system. The message payload commonly contains plain text, but there are provisions for other types of data, such as pictures, graphics, ring tones, etc. Unlike paging, messages are stored in and forwarded to SMS centers in an SMS system. SMS messages travel to wireless communications devices over the wireless communication coverage network control channel, which is separate and apart from the voice channel.
According to SMS-related 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specifications, the source address from which an SMS message originated is encoded in a field known as Transfer-Protocol-Originating-Address (TP-OA) field of the an SMS message. When receiving multiple SMS messages, the receiving entity decodes each SMS message and generally only displays the title of each SMS message according to the decoded content the TP-OA fields. The user may then view a specific SMS message by selecting a specific title.
In the prior art SMS encoding scheme, the TP-OA field only contains information related to the number of the sending entity. When the sending entity has a non-routable number which cannot be replied to, or the number of the sending entity is not included in the contact list stored in the receiving entity, the user may not to able to recognize the exact identity of the sending entity from the title of the SMS message. The user may need to spend time reading the content of the SMS message whose title is an unfamiliar number before realizing it is actually an unimportant SMS message. Therefore, there is a need for a method of handling SMS messages in order to provide efficient recognition of the sending entity.